Today we face a climate of ever increasing misdirection by popular media. This site, along with others, aims to reveal the reality of America and the loss of fact inherent to the over riding theme of our current political and social confusion: Purposeful deception.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Everyone Should Learn Something From Penn State Molestation Scandal

The PennsylvaniaStateUniversity football team
took to the field Saturday and for the first time in 62 years, their coach, Joe
Paterno, was not on the sidelines.

After 46 years as head
coach, Paterno, 84, was fired last week, along with University President Graham
Spanier for their actions – or more accurately – their lack of actions
surrounding the sexual abuse of minors by a former football coach hired by
Paterno.

Normally, we wouldn’t opine
on a national issue of this nature, preferring instead to focus our attention
on South Sound. But the circumstances surrounding the Paterno case are
screaming for comment.

The facts, at least the
facts that have emerged to date, go something like this:

Jerry Sandusky was employed
by Paterno’s Nittany Lions as defensive coordinator, leaving the team in 1999.
In 2002, assistant coach Mike McQueary, then a PennState
graduate assistant, heard a noise in the team showers. When the assistant coach
investigated, he saw Sandusky
engaged in illegal sexual contact with a boy McQureary estimated to be 10 years
old. The next day, McQueary reported the incident to Paterno.

Paterno relayed the
information to athletic director Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, senior vice
president for finance and business. Not one of the men, not McQueary, not
Paterno, not Curley or Schultz, reported the child abuse to law enforcement.

The whole story exploded
into national headlines on Nov. 4, when Pennsylvania’s
attorney general indicted Sandusky (who had
since retired from the PennState football program
but still had an office at the sports complex) on 40 counts of sex crimes
against young boys. The charges were the culmination of a three-year
investigation into sex abuse allegations against Sandusky – an investigation when a brave
15-year-old, dared tell his story of four years of abuse.

A grand jury has identified
at least eight victims.

Sandusky was arrested and pleaded innocent to 40 felony
counts ranging from involuntary deviate sexual intercourse to endangering the
welfare of a child.

At the same time Curley and
Schultz were charged with failure to report child abuse and perjury for their
testimony before the grand jury. Paterno has not been charged.

In the subsequent firestorm,
university trustees fired Paterno and university President Spanier, sparking a
student riot in State College,
Pa.

Those are the sordid
details. Now the commentary:

First, a broadcaster on ESPN
said this incident was so important people would remember where they were when
they heard the news.

Like when older Americans
remember where they were when they heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, or
when President John F. Kennedy was shot, or when Neil Armstrong walked on the
moon, or when the Challenger exploded or when terrorists took down the twin
towers in New York City.

How absurd.

A second thought: Newspapers
and broadcasters across the country repeatedly tied Paterno’s firing to the PennState
“sex scandal.”

This is not a sex scandal. This
is a case of child molestation. There’s a big difference.

Third: We understand how PennState
students see their coach as the campus father figure. But rioting? Smashing
windows? Upending a television truck?

Where was their outrage for
the real victims here – the young boys subjected to years of abuse because
people in authority didn’t speak up and notify police? How many victims could
have been spared had those in power at PennState – and others – notified law
enforcement when Sandusky
was caught in compromising situations?

A fourth thought: In more
than 40 states, the prevailing policy is that such reports must be made to
police or child-protection authorities swiftly and directly, with no option for
delegating the task to others and then not following through. Thank goodness, Washington is a
must-report state.

And a final thought:
Perhaps, just perhaps, this whole ugly mess will get people to re-examine their
own values and responsibilities. Perhaps other victims or witnesses to child
abuse will remember how the secrecy and cover-up in Pennsylvania ruined lives
and reputations and maybe, just maybe, those memories will help them muster the
courage to step forward, to notify authorities immediately and ensure that
abusers of children are held accountable for their crimes.

Maureen Fitzgerald, the
former executive director of Monarch Children’s Justice and Advocacy Center in
Olympia provides these statistics:

• One in four
girls in this country is sexually molested.

• One in six boys
is sexually molested.

• Only one in 10
children that are molested ever report it.

Child sexual abuse happens
every day to children in our community.

Adults who witness sexual
abuse of children have an absolute responsibility to report it. Monarch is an
outstanding local resource to help victims through the justice system and
healing process.

If the Paterno case
convinces abuse witnesses to summon police, that’s about the only good we see
coming from this horrific incident.

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